On Campus Thesis and Research: Interview with Debashis Panda
Written on April 4th, 2020 by {"login"=>"jcbphc21", "email"=>"f20181005@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"Journal Club", "last_name"=>"BPHC"}Debashis Panda is a fourth-year B.E. (Chemical Engineering) student. He did an on-campus thesis for his 4-1 and has recently received a PhD admit from the Texas A&M University (TAMU). We interviewed him as a part of the Thesis Tales Series to get his views on the research scenario in BITS.
Q. What led you to pursue research in the first place?
A. In my first year, I delved into many things including coding and finance and found out that I had an aptitude for the former. So I asked my seniors regarding opportunities within chemical engineering during an SMP, and they told me that I could either go for freelance programming or get into models and simulations. I chose the latter, and while doing projects related to these fields I realised that I had an interest in further research.
Q. How did you begin? Whom did you approach?
A. The right time to start is by the end of 2-1. I along with some of my friends approached a professor and asked him for projects related to simulations, and by doing these projects I got a better insight into these fields and developed an interest in research. Talking to my seniors also helped me a lot.
Q. What did the BITS tag do to help you? What is the research scene at the Chemical Dept. in BPHC?
A. The reputation that BITS has certainly helped because I believe that the professors I contacted when I had doubts regarding my research responded promptly mainly because I am from BITS. However, the research scene itself, especially in the Chemical Department, is not that good, and a major reason for that is a lack of PhD students in our college.
Q. What is the process of writing and publishing articles in scientific journals?
A. Publishing a paper is a very tedious process because we need to be clear and precise about the smallest of details. There are four main aspects of a research paper - the introduction, the results, the model description, and the conclusion. The introduction is the most important aspect. It should give information about the research topic and nothing else, and should also explain why our method is better than the others with regards to the results obtained.
Model descriptions are used to present the data obtained in a more accessible manner. Especially in my case, since the results were of a very abstract and computational nature, I had to use graphical methods to present them in my paper. This is where my graphic designing skills came very handy.
In the conclusion, you have to explain your results in a theoretical manner, and also write about what further work you will be conducting in this field because the publishers of the scientific journal expect you to send them more articles in future.
Basically, a research paper is like a story, but it should always stick to the topic. Reviewers get annoyed with the smallest of mistakes, including grammatical ones, so you need to be really careful about what you write. It took me one month to write my first paper. However, once I got used to it, writing papers became much quicker, so that when the time came for my fourth paper, it took me hardly two days to finish it.
Publishing a paper takes far longer than writing it, usually 5-6 months after the first submission, on account of editing and further discussions. It is further prolonged during the winters, due to the Christmas holidays.
Q. Why did you do on-campus thesis instead of off-campus?
A. I did want to do an off-campus thesis, but since I was working under the same professor in my second and third year and had kept a target of publishing one paper per semester, my workload had increased incredibly, and I decided to stay on campus. However, since my professor was already in collaboration with another professor from Germany, I decided to take his help in processing the data I had collected, which was mainly of a computational nature.
Q. How did you manage to balance academics and research?
A. I devoted my second year to academics since my first year didn’t go so great academically as I was trying different things. In my third year, as the academic workload was less, I was able to devote more time to research.
Q. How did you go about building up your profile?
A. I never gave much thought to building my profile until my 3-1 when I started talking to seniors and writing my CV. I don’t think there is a proper method of building a research profile. It will come naturally to you. All you have to do is try whatever interests you and work on it relentlessly.
Q. What are the benefits of straight PhD over MSc + PhD?
A. One major benefit is that you receive a stipend within 4-5 years. However, you have to work under the same professor for 2-3 years, so if you are placed under a professor you do not prefer, you are stuck. Also, certain universities that offer direct PhD also require you to complete certain courses in that university. Especially in my case, one of the American universities I received offers from needed me to take some courses related to Chemistry, for which I had absolutely zero interest.
Q. What is the domain of your research? What are the implications of your research for future advancements in scientific understanding?
A. I work in the areas of multiphase flows in porous medium. Multiphase flows are very interdisciplinary which show its applications in Mechanical, Civil, Chemical, Pharmacy and most importantly in Environmental engineering. Typically, I develop strategies for finding the best combination of pore size distribution in a porous medium. For this purpose, we developed a novel model called the Lattice Boltzmann model. In the first phase of my research, the precise field of interest was the drying of the proud medium. It might sound very common, but drying is the most complicated phenomenon in the perspective of micro-scale understanding. Ranging from partial condensation spots in the porous medium to slow and fast evaporation which is local to the pore geometries. In my thesis, it was for the first time, I defined these characteristics in the porous medium altogether (i.e. film formation, fast evaporation, slow evaporation) and scaled these fundamental events to upscaled quantities that a layman can find such as total rate of evaporation from the porous block. It became a big achievement, which led me to publish papers in Chemical Engineering Science and led me to present our works in various international conferences.
The second method that we are working on presently is Pore Network Modeling. It is different from the Lattice Boltzmann modelling that we developed but it is computationally faster than it. So now in this quarantine, I am developing an interface model laying both the Lattice Boltzmann model and Pore network model.
These are completely the modelling aspects of multiphase flows. In my PhD at TAMU, I'll be engaged in the next challenge, that's the experimental aspects of it. Having a great knowledge of porous medium, it's thermodynamics, flows and various models, I assume I'll be publishing better works in both validatory experimental and computational works
Q. How important is CG with regards to research opportunities?
A. I would consider 8+ to be an ideal CG because universities in other countries keep that as a cutoff for admitting research students. CG is like money, the more you have, the better are your opportunities. However, even if you have a low CG but a strong research profile, you are good to go.
Q. What is the process for securing a PhD admit?
A. Since I'm going to TAMU for my PhD, I'll just talk about its interview process. There were two interview video meets between us. The first one was about my academics and the second one was about my commitment
In the first one. The professor asked me about my personal interests and academic interests. We discussed all of my projects. Later I talked about what LBM is and how I learnt from scratch. I told about how I came up with ideas to write a paper and how the process of reviews of publication pushed me to make the best out of it. Moreover, the professor, fortunately, was also a BITS alumni, so we talked about BITSian culture, how we are functioning these days, what the process of admission is, etc. Then he let me ask him something. I asked about his personal interests and his opinion of BITS Pilani. I also asked him about TAMU and the people over there. We talked for like 2 hours. It felt more like a casual chat than an interview.
The second interview was to check how committed I am to PhD. He asked me about the stressful aspects of research like family distancing, depression, failures and other stuff that's common in research. Since my on-campus advisor had made me go through the work we did, I was able to convince him that I was emotionally tough and family distancing never bothered me or my family.
I remained on campus after the PS-1 in my second year and worked day and night till my 4-1. In between, I went just for my sister's marriage. I formed a research group in my department for my advisor whom I taught in the nights about LBM. That period was tough for me, as I was attending classes in the mornings, working in labs in the afternoons and at nights I was teaching the juniors. I kept myself together, never broke and came out successful. He was impressed with my commitment and thus I got my PhD admit with an excellence fellowship award and a full scholarship.